Picture Book for Baby

Tomorrow I am taking my 8 month old baby to Arkansas.  Between the drives to and from airports, a lay over in Texas, and the two flights, it's going to be at least 8 hours of travel time.

I've got to admit, I'm a tiny bit terrified.

See, my baby has just gotten to the point where she is extremely proficient at crawling and has realized that she can go where ever she wants if she climbs enough.  I've been spending the last few days searching all over for something to keep her from turning the plane into a jungle-gym (or to keep her from turning into a banshee when she realizes that we won't let her!)

My first idea was to get her a couple of new little toys that we can get out during all our traveling, so we bought a couple of things to keep in my diaper bag, but I'm just not sure that will last long enough.  Then, yesterday I noticed that my daughter loves turning pages.  She has a hard time with board books because they stick and she has a hard time getting the pages apart with her little fingers most of the time.  We have given her (sacrificed) a couple of regular paper books to let her "read" and she likes catalogs, but they always end up thrashed in a matter of minutes.  What I noticed yesterday, was that she spent almost 30 minutes flipping through the pages of our family scrapbook (it probably would have been more if I hadn't gotten tired of trying to rescue all my pictures!).  So, the brilliant idea struck me, why not make her own "scrapbook"?  So that is how this project was born.

This is great for babies who are working on their fine motor skills, also for younger babies who just want to look at pretty pictures while you turn the pages.  If you have an older child, this is a great creative process for them to be a part of as they make their very own picture book!

What you'll need:

• A cheap binder and sheet protectors

OR

•  A small photo book, this is great for a more travel friendly version (you can sometimes get these at the dollar store)
• Card stock (you can use white, or different colors for some variety)
• A couple of magazines, ads, or other pictures. I like to use family oriented magazines, since they have the most kid friendly pictures, but you can find interesting things everywhere!
• Scissors
• double sided tape or a glue stick

How to assemble:

• First step, go through your magazines and ads and pull out all the pictures you want.  If you have an older child they can choose their own pictures and even help cut them out (if you trust them with scissors!).
• Next, you can trim all the pictures down so they look nicer (or if your child is making her own, let her cut the pictures however she wants!)
• Once I have all my pictures cut out (I honestly just find any and all pictures that look interesting) I like to arrange them all on my pages before I start securing them with glue or tape, but that's just my creative process ;)
• Use your double sided tape or glue stick to fix your pictures to the pages to make some awesome collages!
• When your pages are done, simply slip them into the sheet protectors and assemble your binder!
• Just an extra step, if you'd like, you can either print a page with your child's name on it (you can get pretty fancy with this), or even just make a special collage to go right on the front!

Here are some of my incredibly creative and exciting pages:

Enjoy!!!